


Hey Cass

by Torp



Category: Original Work
Genre: Death, Depression, F/M, Hospitals, Letters, Love Letters, Sad, Short & Sweet, Short One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 08:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9874964
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Torp/pseuds/Torp
Summary: Hey CassIt’s me.How have you been?Been better, I guess. I don’t know, in a way I’ve really never been better in my whole life. The air feels a lot lighter, though they keep telling me that’s because of the oxygen they gave me at the hospital was a little heavier or something. Sounds kind of stupid to me, but then again everything seems pretty stupid to me lately. That's a stupid thing to say.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this a while ago, but not too long ago, so it's at that sweet spot of me regretting writing it but not yet being all self-loathing. Anyway, enjoy, or don't. I do care, but it's your choice.

Hey Cass

It’s me.

~~How have you been.~~

I’ve been better, I guess. I don’t know, in a way I’ve really never been better in my whole life. The air feels a lot lighter, though they keep telling me that’s because of the oxygen they gave me at the hospital was a little heavier or something. Sounds kind of stupid to me, but then again everything seems pretty stupid to me lately.

Probably the brain damage, ha ha ha.

I noticed that I stopped laughing out loud. I mean, you already knew that I hardly ever really laughed out loud, it was always for the crowd. But now since my audience left, it’s feels like there’s no reason to lie to myself anymore. I’ve tried to make myself laugh, I guess as a plea for a semblance of some sort of normality, but it all feels forced because it is forced.

They told me I should probably be reading more often, to help my brain get back to normal. I thought it was a bunch of bullshit, since I never read anything before why start now - pretty sure the fact that I can put my gown on with only one orderly that I’m pretty capable of leaving this dump as soon as I can. Anyway, I have actually been making my way through some dusty novels.

I know, sounds kind of silly to imagine me, sitting by the windowsill, eyes darting from page to page as I slowly hallucinate my way through the plot. Actually, nevermind, that’s not really that weird at all. Unless, I never used to be that way. I don’t know, I’m pretty sure I know who I am, but I really can’t be sure of much right now.

~~God, I wish you could tell me who I am right now.~~

Anyway. I’ve been reading all of these books by this dead guy - Kurt Vonnegut. I think that I remember you having to read a book of his for English once. I don’t really remember if you liked him, but I sure as hell do. I don’t know, I think I’m really connecting with the old guy, ha ha. I get this image over and over again while reading of him and I, sitting at this old bar somewhere in Boston, and we’re having a couple drinks as he recounts to me these ideas he’s been having running through his mind. And those ideas are all the stuff from his books - like, I imagine him going off about these confusing toilet-plunger hand shaped aliens in this novel he’s writing, and being really flustered because he thinks it’s incoherent and stupid. But then I always imagine myself smiling and telling him to keep going, that I’ll catch up eventually. Then I laugh internally as he jumps from plot point to plot point, death to life.

Just a weird idea that’s been floating through my head

Everyone’s been really gentle like around me. Like I’m humpty dump and they’re afraid I’ll crack open. ~~Little do they know I’m hard boiled.~~

They’ve been visited me - I can’t remember most of them their names, actually. They said they were your friends, and I suspect they might have been my friends too, though I’m still theorizing. They tell me all about me, about how they knew me, and I sit through it and gasp at all the right parts or whatever, but then they start talking about you.

No matter the circumstance, or how good of an act they seem to be pulling off, I always stop them when they start to get to you. I already know everything there is to know about you, Cass. I promise, ~~I promise.~~

Oh, I know you’ll want to hear about this - the fucking orderlies. I swear, they’re the bane of my goddamn existence. I don’t really know where to begin, so I guess I’ll describe ‘em all.

First there’s Mumbles - I think her name is something that has letters in it. I call her that probably because she can’t help but just choke-up everything she ever says. She’ll say something like ‘make sure not to *something something* or your frontal lobe with *something something* and you could relapses into another state of shock’

I get her probably five or six days a week, which leads me to believe that she’s probably not a very sociable gal. I’ve been making more of an effort to befriend her - I swear, Cass, not for that, I just feel for the girl. Shut up.

Next there’s Sassle B. Demille, as I call her. She’s this really interesting kinda heavy gal who either brightens my day or just gets on my fucking nerves. It really depends on the day, but I noticed I’m inclined to give more/take more of her shit depending on the weather. But that’s how I was before, if I can remember. Which I can’t, so whatever fuck it. Sassle gives crap to almost everyone in the west wing, though she’s inclined to sneak me an extra cookie with my meal when I compliment her figure before lunchtime. She’s kinda pretty, not going to lie. Jesus Christ, Cass, I can almost feel your eyes burning into the back of my head from beyond the grave!

Lastly is my least favorite, Joan. Notice that I didn’t even both to give her a dehumanizing, clever nickname. That’s because she is basically a pile of ~~unenthused~~ clay with bad bangs. I can’t stand the gal - she’s way too gloomy for my liking. I’m not asking everyone to be happy all the time, I mean, it feels kind of hypocritical when someone on happy pills is telling everyone to cheer up for goodness sake, but whatever. But I have seen her laugh at least once - it was out of the blue, when she seemed to be the most mopey I had seen her yet. She was over watering the ficus by the door, as she did everyday she came in, seemingly trying to drown the poor thing, when she erupts into this nasally, mad-fit of laughter. It honestly pissed me off more than when I learned about      for almost no reason. I would have gotten out of my chair and shook her just to get her to shut up, though I still couldn’t walk around then. I can hop by now, thank you very much.

Mom visited me today. Your parents are nowhere to be seen. People say they’ve become hermits. That’s all the familial news you or I really need to discuss. Quit bringing it up. It’ll only make you more angry.

The hospital has started to notice all the shit I’ve been doing on my computer. I mean, when you’re decommissioned for long enough, you’ve got some catching up to do. In my case, it was doing all the weird shady stuff that I used to like to do back then in the course of a week. They took it away with the first few days, though by then I’d already gotten enough music on my phone to last me a lifetime. You always told me to check out all these bands whose names float through my mind day in and day out. Plus all those old hip-hop albums from the early 2000s you were obsessed with, for some reason.

The doctors don’t feel real. They seem to swing in and out, asking me my name and birthday, tapping on my skull a couple times and run out to go do that to probably hundreds of other patients. It’s so bizarre, honestly. The ordinaries seem to clear the room whenever they come in, though I assume that’s because the nurses hate the doctors. Like how the relationship is in all the Scrubs re-runs I’m subjected to watching. Where’s the ER, the Grey’s Anatomy. You loved that show, right?

I feel like I’m only describing what art I’ve been digesting, so I figured I’ll describe the premises:

It’s pretty depressing. It’s pretty clean. It’s very lonely. It’s incredibly isolating. I have nightmares every other night, and the nights between those nights I dream about you which is somehow both better and worse than the other dreams. It makes me think - what’s better, seeing Cass or being eaten by a giant spider. Well, both have an equal likelihood of happening and both make me want to hide under the covers.

I’ve been staring at the walls a lot. I know that’s a weird thing to notice, but it’s true. I’ve been drifting away from the typical staring out the window at clouds, instead locking my eyes with the one thing more boring than paint drying - paint already dry. I don’t know, I just stare at the wall and focus on everything. I think about a lot of things when matching wits with the grey enclosure. I think a lot about what I’m going to do when I get out of here. I think a lot about other people that I used to remember. I think a lot about that night. What it felt like.

It’s become an obsession for me. I keep trying to put myself back in that night, but it never seems to go along just right. I always find myself in the passenger seat, with you driving. It’s always the middle of the night, not dusk. You’re always wearing a baseball cap - the one that’s resting on my lap right now - I don’t think you were wearing one then, but I can’t be sure.

I always try to copy just how it went that night - I ask you where you want to grab something to eat, and at first you always respond with something snappy - it changes. But then I try to bring up the exact list of places we could have gone that night in the exact order, but you always stop me. Then I get real quiet, because then I know what’s coming;

You tell me this is all wrong, that this isn’t healthy. You tell me that I need to stop doing this. You take one hand off of the wheel and intertwine your fingers with mine. Your hands are cold, in a really nice way. You look right at me and tell me things I always wanted to tell you. Things I.. still can’t admit to you. But then your voice starts to crack, and you tell me that you’ve been worrying about me. That I’ve been repressing things, that I’ve been burying things deep down inside. You tell me that it wasn’t my fault. That it was no one’s fault. That the driver on the other side of the road, fastly approaching us at damn near 60 mph, had a sudden heart attack, and that their sudden impact with us was unavoidable. I always explain that if I had told you I wasn’t feeling like going out, maybe we could have been fine. But you repeat to me ‘if what’ over and over, drumming in my goddamn ear drums over and over again. I get the message instantly every time. But you stop right when it starts to get to me. By this point I’m always crying. You are too. And I always remember that right before we fail to brace for impact, changing the lives of the two young kids running out for a late night snack forever, you lean over and kiss me one last time, before the windshield explodes into a sudden rain of glass, cutting up the right side of my face, tearing the airbag, the metal crunching, and then - blacking out.

You… you always had a flair for the dramatic.


End file.
